GOP effort to make Mayorkas face of border runs into Senate dead-end

The dismissal of impeachment articles against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas caps a nearly two-year campaign to boot the official from his job — ending the legislative play to make him the face of the border while raising questions about what comes next for a GOP determined to put migration front and center. 

For Senate Democrats, Mayorkas’s impeachment was a dead end, failing to demonstrate any high crimes or misdemeanors. With its swift rejection of the articles, the Senate determined there were no constitutional grounds to impeach the secretary. 

“We’re supposed to have debates on the issues, not impeachments on the issues. We are not supposed to say that when you disagree with someone on policy, then that’s suddenly a high crime and misdemeanor. That would degrade government,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a press conference after the vote.

“The dangerous precedent is not the one that Republicans are talking about. But the one of letting impeachment take the place of policy disagreements. Cabinet person after Cabinet person could be subject to this — we cannot have that happen.” 

It was a response in line with criticism from numerous conservatives outside the hallways of the House, from legal scholar Jonathan Turley to former Bush-era Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who said GOP lawmakers hadn’t laid out a case for kicking Mayorkas out of his job. 

But leaving the Senate shortly after the impeachment effort failed, Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) suggested there would be consequences for the speed with which Schumer disposed of the articles. 

“The marketplace on the border — this helps that discussion because I think the people that have been running it didn’t want to have a public airing out of how bad that is and how big an election issue it’ll be,” he said.

“I think they may have gambled there that this kind of sweeps it under the rug, kind of softens a conversation. I think you could maybe make the opposite case. And I think the border is still going to be the border … You go to the essence of the issue, and I think all the disorder is still there.” 

The party-line votes — only Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted present on one of the articles — ends a legislative effort that began almost as soon as Republicans took the majority in the House.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) introduced the first resolution to impeach Mayorkas just after the GOP selected a Speaker. Several colleagues followed, but it was repeated efforts by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to force a vote on the matter that accelerated its consideration in the House.

Still, it’s an unsatisfying end for those who championed the effort.

“I don’t think we can do anything,” Greene said.

“I mean, if we had courage in the House, we might refuse to fund a salary — there’s things like that in the next budget process … If Republicans remember that controlling the House means you have the power of the purse, we can do all kinds of things. We really can. We can do everything, but it requires leadership that has the courage to push it through. And we don’t have that right now.”

The House articles embraced an unusual approach to impeachment, accusing Mayorkas of violating immigration laws as well as “breach of public trust” — arguing he had violated his oath of office.

The bulk of the articles lists various immigration statutes Republicans say Mayorkas violated. That includes a law requiring the detention of all migrants entering the country — something no administration has ever done. It also suggests enforcement policies laid out by Mayorkas were illegal, though they were upheld by the Supreme Court. Immigration law experts have also said Mayorkas’s policies are in line with immigration statutes and the way they’ve been carried out by prior administrations.

The articles also fault Mayorkas for lifting several Trump administration policies — including one actually lifted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Republicans also accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress in saying the border was operationally secure, arguing he did not meet the definition under the Secure Fence Act, which says such a standard is met only when not a single person or good wrongly crosses the border.

Mayorkas, when appearing before Congress, suggested it was improper to hold him to that definition.

In a July hearing, Mayorkas said: “With respect to the definition of operational control, I do not use the definition that appears in the Secure Fence Act. And the Secure Fence Act provides statutorily that operational control is defined as preventing all unlawful entries into the United States. By that definition, no administration has ever had operational control.”

Still, Senate Republicans on Wednesday suggested the response amounted to a felony, as witnesses can be prosecuted for making false statements to Congress.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) suggested the rejection of the articles demonstrated their baselessness.

“Today’s decision by the Senate to reject House Republicans’ baseless attacks on Secretary Mayorkas proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment,” DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement.

“As he has done throughout more than 20 years of dedicated public service, Secretary Mayorkas will continue working every day to enforce our laws and protect our country. It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms.”

Senate Republicans on Wednesday lamented the lack of debate.

“We have in fact ignored the directions of the House which was to have a trial. We have no evidence, no procedure,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the floor.

“This is not a proud day in the history of the Senate.”

But Schumer argued the blame lay with Republicans. 

“Rather than taking that time to hold the debate that Republicans claimed was imperative, they denied our fair and reasonable offer, and didn’t seem to know what to do,” he said after the votes.

Still, Republicans including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) suggested the party-line votes could have gone differently were there a full trial.

“I could have gone either way, but it would depend on what the evidence showed. I hadn’t prejudged it, and I certainly hadn’t made up my mind to convict,” she said.

“But I think we did not carry out our constitutional duty by not allowing the impeachment managers to present their case, not hearing the defense counsel answer the charges. It establishes a terrible precedent.”

The impeachment’s path to approval in the House, however, wasn’t seamless either.

The resolution required two votes to pass the lower chamber after the first vote was narrowly sunk when three Republican lawmakers voted against the measure, accusing their colleagues of politicizing impeachment and failing to demonstrate Mayorkas committed a crime.

Democrats on Wednesday largely grumbled about being forced to sit through multiple GOP efforts to sidestep the swift impeachment, with Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) saying it provided one big lesson.

“People want to see work done on the southern border. We had a chance to do stuff on the southern border, we didn’t do that,” he said, referring to a border security package negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators and killed by House conservatives.

“This was a political impeachment. The precedent set here was: Don’t do political impeachments.”

Mychael Schnell and Al Weaver contributed.